I recently reinstalled Team Fortress 2. I originally bought it for OSX back when Steam was released for that and so I got the earbuds. The stupid thing is that the game is unplayable on my computer when running OSX so so didn't touch it for a long time (this was back before item trading and stuff).

I have a couple weeks of nothing to do before school so I decide to fire up TF2 and every game I am bombarded with people begging me to trade them my earbuds...people are even friending me on Steam so they can enquire about the earbuds.

Has anyone else experienced this? It's strange. All I care about when I play TF2 is winning games and K/D, and it seems like there aren't many items that are significant upgrades anyways.

I'm about to install it for the first time. I'm tired of everyone telling me how awesome it is and me not knowing.

Earbuds? I can't say I've noticed anything about trading stuff. :/

I've played since the beta, the gameplay is still solid as hell.

Well if you get on then invite me to the steam group. But you better not ask for my earbuds.

I don't think I can invite you... I'm in the Massassi steam group... I don't know who invited me.

They're a hat, so yes. It's pretty sensible.

(Everything is hats. Even guns)

Earbuds are a highly sought item because they're extremely rare. They were an exclusive event item (during the OS X launch) and so they are, in effect, a high-value currency. People want to buy them cheap, and sell them for really expensive stuff (since a pair of earbuds will get you just about anything available).

There are other items that are similar, like Bill/Ellis's hat.

You should sell them for cash.

I was seeing people trading Bill's hat for a copy of Skyrim... do you think I could get a copy anywhere for my earbuds?